ve direction in which
the impulse to purposeful action may find expression. The effect of a
consistent inhibition on industrially useful activity in the case of the
leisure-class women shows itself in a restless assertion of the impulse
to workmanship in other directions than that of business activity. As
has been noticed already, the everyday life of the well-to-do women and
the clergy contains a larger element of status than that of the average
of the men, especially than that of the men engaged in the modern
industrial occupations proper. Hence the devout attitude survives in a
better state of preservation among these classes than among the common
run of men in the modern communities. Hence an appreciable share of the
energy which seeks expression in a non-lucrative employment among these
members of the vicarious leisure classes may be expected to eventuate in
devout observances and works of piety. Hence, in part, the excess of
the devout proclivity in women, spoken of in the last chapter. But it
is more to the present point to note the effect of this proclivity
in shaping the action and coloring the purposes of the non-lucrative
movements and organizations here under discussion. Where this
devout coloring is present it lowers the immediate efficiency of
the organizations for any economic end to which their efforts may be
directed. Many organizations, charitable and ameliorative, divide their
attention between the devotional and the secular well-being of the
people whose interests they aim to further. It can scarcely be doubted
that if they were to give an equally serious attention and effort
undividedly to the secular interests of these people, the immediate
economic value of their work should be appreciably higher than it is.
It might of course similarly be said, if this were the place to say it,
that the immediate efficiency of these works of amelioration for the
devout might be greater if it were not hampered with the secular motives
and aims which are usually present.

Some deduction is to be made from the economic value of this class of
non-invidious enterprise, on account of the intrusion of the devotional
interest. But there are also deductions to be made on account of the
presence of other alien motives which more or less broadly traverse
the economic trend of this non-emulative expression of the instinct
of workmanship. To such an extent is this seen to be true on a closer
scrutiny, that, when all is told,